I’m not superstitious though I sometimes know I lie to myself that I’m not.
Anthropologists will tell you that somewhere in the inner sanctum of any adult African’s consciousness, there larks an ominous acknowledgement and fear of the unknown. Belief, accepting that things exist or happen without proof, isn’t irrational.
It’s accepting the inevitability of phenomena that no matter our wishes, things will happen anyway and we’re helplessly confronted by inescapability. That’s how we wander in the world of fatalism.
We passively live in resignation, accepting the inevitable. But inevitability breeds pessimism in our lives.
We’re forever indignantly adamant that nothing happens for nothing. Inevitability is designated, patented.
Thus, our belief in God is our way of explaining away what we can’t comprehend.
It’s the passive transfer of our fears to the celestial. So it is that no one just dies; there is always a reason to doubt rational demise.
Even when the cause of death is so blatantly obvious, we must explain it away. It could be witchcraft, a curse.
This is how my two paternal aunties found themselves in a bind when they uncontrollably wailed that their in-laws had killed their niece when they died in a road accident.
Today we bury Maggie, that forever favourite cousin of everybody. Exactly two weeks today, she perished when the matatu she was in rolled off the Kakamega-Kisumu road into a gully at Tigoi trading centre.
There is a tight sharp corner at which warning signs shout loudly to drivers to slow down and not overtake.
My wife, though wounded, survived the accident to tell a horrifying account of two drivers in rickety matatus in a mad road race in a dangerous zone.
She recounts passengers pleading, crying out for mercy as the seemingly possessed drivers swerved this way and that way blocking each other.
“He’s like a demon, laughing. Out of the blue, this huge trailer came from nowhere in front of us. I passed out,” she struggled to explain from her hospital bed.
That week, I had listened keenly to John Mututho, the former Nacada chairman tell a TV anchor that most public vehicle drivers are usually high on intoxicants.
He argued that fatigue is but an excuse to take drugs.
In his usual cantankerous self, he rhetorically wondered why National Transport and Safety Authority does speed checking, a police function, instead of random spot drug testing of drivers. That’s a point that could save lives on the road.
But this isn’t a eulogy for Maggie. No.
One, I want to rant about the madness on our roads by matatu, bus, lorry and trailer drivers. They’re a law unto themselves. Someone needs to reign in on these monsters before they turn the roads into human wastelands.
Two, our police, dedicated as they’re, could do with more capacity building in first aid equipment on patrol. You train police to save lives and then don’t provide the tools. That’s tying their hands.
Three, I’m trying to figure out whether superstition isn’t suppressed reality that manifests in dreams and prior rational actions that lead to some events and incidences.
I’m African after all and the day before the crash, I had insisted that I am reluctant to my wife going to a hospital in Kisumu for a check-up on an irritable armpit boil.
You know, those boils that turn out to be signs for malignant ailment. Did I ensnare her into near-death? This still worries me.
On the accident Friday, I woke up with a sense of foreboding. Somehow Fundi Konde’s Ajali Haikingiki lyrics bore into my subconsciousness.
Unsettled I let the nagging song flow; Hiyo ajali, haikingiki; Asinipo, Mola mwenyewe. Liliguruma Likoni likatiririka; Wale pasenja wakafeleha baharini. Niliona hiyo, Kwaherini. Dereva kombo ungama zako zimekwisha; kwenu Mombasa Jirani wazikwa shirika.
Was that premonition? A foretelling of real events happening far away? That morning, the first call came via my wife’s phone. It wasn’t her but a police officer.
“That you? This is the police. Your wife was in an accident and we’re taking them to hospital,” came the cold voice.
“Taking them” to hospital? I called back. No answer.
A cold sweat washed over me. Hiyo ajali, haikingiki; Asinipo, Mola mwenyewe. The accident cannot be prevented when God has signed on. Had the inevitable happened? Liliguruma Likoni likatiririka; Wale pasenja wakafeleha baharini. Could…? Did the police say morgue of the hospital? Niliona hiyo, Kwaherini.
Maggie died at the casualty reception of Vihiga County Referral Hospital.
Vihiga County Police did a sterling evacuation of survivors to the hospital. Their deed prevented mass casualties.
I begin to think the police effort would’ve been augmented had they an equipped patrol ambulance in tow. Maggie died on the table as dedicated hospital staff tried to resuscitate her, courtesy of rapid police salvage.
I must say something, too, about these devoted frontline health workers in Vihiga county.
Despised, harassed and overworked without pay, it speaks well of their professional calling that they didn’t transfer their anger against their employer to the accident victims. They’ve been treated shabbily; today they are on the payroll, tomorrow they are not; until the courts return them to work — without pay.
In spite of the inhuman treatment, I loud the dedicated service of health staff at Vihiga County Referral Hospital.
They don’t have tools, they lack protective gear but their dedication is manifest. I’ll not risk their jobs by mentioning them individually here, for I know the vicious and malicious disposition of their employer.
There are over 500 of them on the streets, despite a court order. The rest of them have gone 20 months without pay.
I wouldn’t add to the pain of those still at work. My plea: Continue doing it for patients, not the suited men who bastardise your lives and profession.
For what goes around, must come around sooner than later.
